My Shadow
by SPS-kun
Summary: Formerly Forty Six and Two. What happened on the night Sensui Shinobu went insane? SensuiItsuki, gore, angst


My Shadow

A Yû Yû Hakusho fanfiction by SirPsychoSexy

A/N: Done for an "image song" challenge at the LJ community "Temps Mort", in which one had to select a song that was fitting for a character, a pairing, or a scene from an anime and write a piece reflecting the mood of the song (and titling the piece with the song's title- changed at the behest of Xing the Wise.). I selected "46 & 2" by Tool, since I got an incorrigible plot bunny listening to it ("Oh, my God, this SO reminds me of the night Sensui went insane! I go write about it now!") and I'm one of the biggest Tool/A Perfect Circle fans in existence (or so I like to think). Also, the atmosphere of the song is angsty and rather gloomy, and I like to interpret the lyrics as the struggle of human existence. So, this fanfic was born.

SPS

"Itsuki...There are no humans here."

The tall, slender blue-eyed youth was drenched in blood, blood of infidels, blood of those that should die and never be given another chance, even in the deepest hell. And he pronounced his words, half-scared, half dealing judgment upon them, his eyes looking up into the golden gaze of his Reikai Tantei partner and lover for silent approval, his legs staying still...

"Shinobu..." whispered Itsuki in his typical maternal style. "Are you all right? We should get you cleaned up..." He gently led the young man out of the villa, hands on his back in a gesture of reassurance, and he felt his back muscles shake.

Sensui Shinobu, feared Reikai Tantei, had seen the depths of hell, and it was not the one of legends, with demons of all sorts parading around. It was very much a human invention...so many years of his work, and for naught, to protect innocents that were by no means innocent...

Stepping slowly, the pair made it out of the Black Black Club's villa, and Itsuki saw and felt his lover's tension and apprehension, his face struggling to hold back tears, his whole body drenched in blood..._so much blood..._ They finally made it to a nearby lake, with the crescent moon and stars dancing silently overhead, making the black water shimmer.

Itsuki sat by the lakeshore, washing his hands of the blood he had picked up from Shinobu's back with ease. The teenaged human just stood there, stunned...

"See?" Itsuki lifted up his hands. "It washes it off...it'll be okay...We just won't go back to Reikai in the morning."

But Shinobu was not paying attention; he had caught a glimpse of his bloodied reflection on the water's moonlit surface. What started back at him, or so he thought, was far from a man; it was a monster, the kind of monster that he had believed yôkai to be for his whole life...

"I-Itsuki...I'm...I'm a killer, a murderer...I'm...no better...than...they are..." He started to weep silently, realizing in that instant there was something sorely wrong with humanity, himself included...His eyes widened from fear and shock, and his own paranoid face stared back up at him from the water.

Itsuki stood up and embraced him. "There, there...you almost killed me, and you let me live. I'm so grateful to you for that." With that, he gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"But...I tried...I thought...you...were evil...but I am...the one who...is...evil...Humanity is evil..." The teenager sobbed as he remembered all of the yôkai's lives he had ended, as if by reflex, and how the events of that night had reflected on his own cruelty and his own delusions that the world could be righted by defending Ningenkai. "Besides, how could I not let you live? I would hate myself if I had killed you, especially after you said...you said...you watched the same comedy as me..." That particular paradox, of a yôkai that seemed more human than many humans, of Itsuki's very existence, had never made much sense until that night.

Itsuki could feel the young man's turmoil, as he felt things inside him twist apart and divide, and, by the time the sun had come up and he had bathed to get the blood off of his body, the yôkai could have sworn his shadow had divided up into at least two separate pieces...

He looked into the boy's eyes again, after sunrise, to find someone different, not his Shinobu, staring back at him. Someone hard and cold, unfamiliar, protective, with eyes like daggers boring through to the back of his skull. He did not know him, but he vowed to himself to love him anyways, even if this person loathed his very being...Itsuki would be waiting from now on for his Shinobu to return, to remember him, to bring him out from the other side.

FIN


End file.
